I wasn’t that thrilled with assigned summer homework, preferring to let our reading, math, etc. flow out of whatever we’ve got going but we dived in and worked on this a little at a time while we were at home.

If you haven’t read My Side of the Mountain, then maybe you should. It’s about a boy who runs away from home to go spend time by himself in the mountains. It was written in 1959 and talks about how little people knew about living off the land–but this boy knew; he knew which plants to eat and how to build a shelter.

How many of us today would even know where to begin. That number of knowledgeable people has dwindled even more since 1959. Most of us have no clue how to make or do things within our homes, much less on the side of a mountain.

We do a lot from scratch around our house, like canning and bread baking and even some cheese-making but I’m not sure how I’d fair if I was thrown into the wilderness and had to fend for myself. How about you? What do you know that would help you to survive?

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One thought on “My Side of the Mountain”

This was one of my favorite books when I was a child. I was desperate at times to escape a bad home life and used to plan out what I might need to live in my tree and make it through the winter. I had forgotten all about this book. I’m going to have to see if I can get it in the library here. Thanks for writing about it and reminding me.